Buried by “Back-to-School”
My youngest son will gladly explain this to you: having three kids as “spotters” has dramatically improved my odds of finding my car in about any parking lot! This is a great “value-added” feature for someone who tends to focus forward, fully forgetting the eventual need to retrace my steps.
Being mom to three kids also increases my need to frequent the asphalt parking grids, however. They eat; they grow (rinse and repeat)… And, this season’s frenzy of football, cross-country, soccer (and still more soccer), paired with the always surprising back-to-school blitz has almost buried me. I can empathize with friends who choose to grab on to the edges of their community and hover at home. They know that if they step out of their daily rhythm they’re unlikely to synch the whole process ever again. They’ll miss practices and games and be short necessary school supplies. They’ll get signed up as team administrator if they take so much as a bathroom break.
Fortunately, I have no real “rhythm” off of the dance floor, so I’m not dissuaded by the risk of chaos. Severe weather with its subsequent cancellations can actually have a calming effect on my life; I brake for lightning and head home. While leaving everything to run off with my daughter over the Labor Day weekend is just slightly impractical, I also see it as a rare and wonderful opportunity. For me, the rejuvenating effect of travel, of mixing up the routine, far outlasts the splattering effect of temporarily dropping an overfilled schedule.
And so, my daughter is packing her carry-on bag as she loads school supplies into her backpack and prepares for the season’s first soccer games and cross country meets. We’ll tactfully wait until her second day of school to send in the absence request form.
When life feels like it’s flying by too fast, it usually is. And, it’s time to take an unconventional detour off of your fast track to sit on the sidelines for a few minutes. Knowing my daughter and knowing me, we won’t spend too much time actually sitting, but mentally, we’ll be digging in our heels to reclaim what belongs to us alone.
It’s funny that while you’re in the midst of it you can’t wait for it to be over with…all of the rushing from here to there and the suprise announcements of “I have to go to ‘fill in the blank’ tonight. Eventually as they get older in their teens, it becomes I’m going over here or spending the night at so and so’s and then you start to get the first pangs of separation which you will eventually go through called “empty nest syndrom.” “Geez, I’ve got the house all to myself tonight” or “Well, it’s just you and me” you say to the lone member of the herd who has no plans. Later on, you experience guilt over those feelings you had of wanting it to slow down or be over with or dare I say “I can’t wait for them all to be out of the house?”. “What kind of parent was I to have such thougts?” All I can say now is, I look back at all of those events as fun and don’t even remember the chaos of running around. What a great time that was. I come back to the little saying of “Learn from the past, live in the present, and plan for the future.” Enjoy these times…they’re priceless. It sounds like your daughter and you have tapped into the gold mine.
My constant prayer is to build accessible memories, places that I can return to again and again when life inevitably (right?) quiets down someday. -Hope I’m awake enough now to remember them later!!
[…] a Travel Blog shares her story about Getting buried in back-to-school activities. She says… When life feels like it’s flying by too fast, it usually is. And, […]
I rely on my son’s spatial memory to get me to my car in the lot or even the best route to someone’s place in town! LOL! When he was three he was already telling me from the back seat of the car, “Mom, isn’t Tommy’s house that way?”
Isn’t it great how our kids can take on some of the brain cell burden for us? -Leaving our own minds free to remember their schedules and projects and…hmmm…I’m seeing a cycle here…